The Magnetic North eBook

Nearer the white teeth gleamed, fiercer the gale,
swifter the current, sweeping back the boats.
The Mary C. was left behind, fighting for life,
while it seemed as if no human power could keep the
Tulare from being hurled against the western
shore. Twice, in spite of all they could do,
she was driven within a few feet of what looked like
certain death. With a huge effort, that last
time, her little crew had just got her well in mid-stream,
when a heavy roller breaking on the starboard side
drenched the men and half filled the cockpit.
Each rower, still pulling for dear life with one hand,
bailed the boat with the other; but for all their
promptness a certain amount of the water froze solid
before they could get it out.

“Great luck, if we’re going to take in
water like this,” said the cheerful Kentuckian,
shipping his oar and knocking off the ice—­“great
luck that all the stores are so well protected.”

“Protected!” snapped out an anxious, cast-iron-looking
man at the rudder.

“Yes, protected. How’s water to get
through the ice-coat that’s over everything?”

The cast-iron steersman set his jaw grimly. They
seemed to be comparatively safe now, with half a mile
of open water between them and the western shore.

But they sat as before, stiff, alert, each man in
his ice jacket that cracked and crunched as he bent
to his oar. Now right, now left, again they eyed
the shore.

Would it be—­could it be there they would
have to land? And if they did...?

Lord, how it blew!

“Hard a-port!” called out the steersman.
There, just ahead, was a great white-capped “roller”
coming—­coming, the biggest wave they had
encountered since leaving open sea.

But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight
into the crested roller, and the Tulare took
it gamely, “bow on.” All was going
well when, just in the boiling middle of what they
had thought was foaming “white-cap,” the
boat struck something solid, shivered, and went shooting
down, half under water; recovered, up again, and seemed
to pause in a second’s doubt on the very top
of the great wave. In that second that seemed
an eternity one man’s courage snapped.

While he was pouring out the words, the steersman
sprang from the tiller, and seized Potts’ oar
just in time to save the boat from capsizing.
Then he and the big Kentuckian both turned on the distracted
Potts.

“You infernal quitter!” shouted the steersman,
and choked with fury. But even under the insult
of that “meanest word in the language,”
Potts sat glaring defiantly, with his half-frozen
hands in his pockets.